A mobile app that helps users express gratitude towards service industry workers.
For this class project, my team was tasked with designing a digital product that responded to the CHI 2022 Design Brief topic, gratitude, in a meaningful way. Being in the midst of a pandemic, we recognized the impact and sacrifice of service industry workers and how there are few ways to show kindness and support. Together, we created Token, an app that allows users to show gratitude within their local communities. I contributed to all phases of this project, from research to design.
UX Designer
Sep 2021 - Dec 2021
Figma
Liz Bigham
Omar Dandan
Morgan Miller
Tiffany Guo
There are currently limited ways in which people can give recognition to service industry workers.
Our team created a prototype for a mobile-phone application that enables users to send digital tokens of appreciation to service industry workers within their local communities.
The full interactive prototype can be found here.
In order to better understand the problem space, our team conducted a series of user interviews within our local community. We hoped to gain deeper insight on the existing ways in which people interact with service industry workers. In total, our team interviewed 10 members of the Ann Arbor community and identified the following trends:
1. Kindness is recognized by service industry workers
2. Community members want to help each other succeed
3. Tips and verbal “thank yous” are the most common forms of gratitude
We examined other platforms and methods to understand how users currently express gratitude towards service industry workers and how our product might improve this process.
Based on our findings, my team developed a set of user personas to help us empathize with out end-users. We created personas for two user groups: service industry workers and local community members.
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My team created storyboards to represent how our users might interact with our product.
To begin our design, we first created a user flow to help develop the paths for different user interactions.
Based on the user flow, we developed a paper prototype in order to quickly visualize and test our ideas.
We created wireframes for our next iteration, incorporating the feedback we recieved on our paper prototype.
My team created a high-fidelity prototype to test with more users.
My team and I used our high-fidelity iteration to conduct formal usability tests with 10 users. Our goal was to evaluate our app's usability and determine if we successfully solved our users' problems. Overall, we received positive feedback on our design. Based on our users' insights, we identified a few areas for improvement:
Payment methods
Our prototype did not include the process of connecting bank accounts or debit cards.
Viewing tips
There was no way for users to see their balance of tips.
Skipping tips
It was unclear to users that tips were optional.
We incorporated this feedback into our final design iteration.
This was a very fun project to work on since we got to explore a problem space of our choosing. I am happy with how our product turned out and enjoyed collaborating with my team. This project gave me the opportunity to use a variety of UX design methods and allowed for multiple rounds of testing, which helped us greatly refine our design.
In addition to design, this project allowed me to strengthen my skills in project management. Given that this was a semester-long project, I learned to regularly checked-in with my team members in order to ensure we met our weekly deadlines. Additionally, since my team had varying levels of design experience, I learned how to distribute tasks in such a way that would capitalize on each member's strengths.
